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Posts Tagged ‘fantasy’

See How Well It Works?

Posted in Current Events, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on February 27, 2011| 17 Comments »

Straight Man:  Why do you keep snapping your fingers?
Comedian:  To keep the elephants away.
Straight Man:  But there aren’t any elephants within a thousand miles!
Comedian:  See how well it works?

I really wish this silly bit of business, which was probably already old when vaudeville was young, was merely a joke; unfortunately, this sort of idiocy is foisted on the citizenry regularly by “authorities” desperate to justify their existence and prove their omniscience.  Whenever some sort of disaster (like the “Y2K bug” or the “swine flu pandemic”) predicted by government officials fails to materialize, you can bet that their response will not be sheepishness or apology but rather self-congratulation; they’ll explain that the reason the sky didn’t fall was because of the hysterical prediction and the ludicrously expensive and vastly-overblown “precautions” it inspired.  Just as airlines now refer to all arrival and departure estimates as “on time” no matter how long they were actually delayed, so government agencies claim to have been correct no matter what the actual outcome of their predictions.

The most recent example of this was, of course, the prophecy that an army of gypsy harlots tens of thousands strong would descend upon the Dallas area for Super Bowl Week like a swarm of marauding locusts, consuming every teenage girl in its path and leaving the entire area awash in venereal disease and the crime which police love to claim “inevitably follows” prostitution like cops after doughnuts.  Sensible people like yours truly tried to explain that these predictions are made for every major sporting event nowadays and literally never come true, but obviously the “authorities” ignored that because the truth didn’t provide an excuse for tightening the government’s grip a few notches.  And since vast efforts were made and millions of dollars spent to chase bogeymen, officials couldn’t very well admit they were wrong; so, we get this bold-faced lie on the Texas Attorney General’s website instead:  North Texas Law Enforcement, Attorney General’s Office Prevent Human Trafficking Surge At 2011 Super Bowl:

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott today announced the preliminary results of a joint local, state and federal law enforcement effort to crack down on human trafficking during the 2011 Super Bowl…a total of 133 arrests.

…“Thanks to a coordinated enforcement, public education, and deterrence effort, Texas-based law enforcement officials were prepared to respond if we encountered human trafficking victims – or the ruthless criminals who trafficked them,” Attorney General Abbott said.  “By working proactively to prepare for the nation’s most high-profile sporting event, Texas was uniquely positioned to crack down on traffickers and provide much-needed help to their victims.”

Sexually exploited human trafficking victims are effectively forced into committing a crime – which means that they are both victims and offenders.  In one case, the Attorney General’s Special Investigations Unit and Grapevine police officers arrested a female and charged her with prostitution.  After she was released from custody, the woman told the Attorney General’s Special Investigations Unit that she was a sex trafficking victim and identified her trafficker.  On February 11, Dallas police officers and NTTTF members successfully located and arrested Joshua Andrews, 39, and charged him with Trafficking in Persons.  Andrews, a suspected gang member, was taken into custody at the Dallas County Jail.  The NTTTF connected the woman with crime victim advocates to help her recover from her trafficker’s abuse.

Sixteen members of the Texas congressional delegation commended the State’s human trafficking prevention efforts surrounding the 2011 NFL Super Bowl in Arlington.  In a letter to Attorney General Abbott, the congressional members said:  “As you know, domestic minor sex trafficking impacts the lives of thousands of American children each year in states across the country, including Texas.  Your efforts in Texas are an example of what can and should be done to protect children at risk for and victimized by sexual exploitation”…

Wow, what a circle-jerk.  If these “officials” got any more exuberant in their praise and congratulations of each other, it would be a homosexual orgy (which I’m sure violates some sort of law in Texas).  Even with an undefined, open-ended time period (we’re told the “operations” went “through Super Bowl Sunday” but not when they began) the best they could do was 133 arrests, not all of them for prostitution, in the ENTIRE Dallas-Fort Worth area.  Considering that we’ve already been told 23 prostitution arrests is typical for five days in Dallas, we can guess that 22 over 2½ weeks isn’t unusual for smaller Arlington; let’s go out on a limb and imagine 23 arrests in Fort Worth and 24 in all the other suburbs (Grand Prairie, Irving, etc) put together and that gives us roughly 92 prostitution arrests in the entire Metroplex that week.  Add 41 unspecified “other” arrests (which an ambitious police department could easily manage in one raid) and we get 133 without even breaking a sweat.  And of all that, how many alleged “human traffickers”?  One.  And how do we know he’s a “trafficker”?  Why, on the testimony of an arrested streetwalker who had a choice of going to jail as a “criminal” or to a shelter as a “victim”, of course!  Does anyone else detect a faintly Swedish odor on these proceedings?

But just in case anyone else has the rudimentary math skills necessary to work this out as I did, Attorney General Abbot tells us that it would have been worse had thousands of cops and millions of dollars not been dedicated to this boondoggle.

Taxpayer:  Why did you spend all that money and devote all that manpower to harass prostitutes?
Greg Abbott:  To keep the human traffickers away.
Taxpayer:  But human traffickers don’t follow major sporting events!
Greg Abbott:  See how well it works?

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Old Men and Young Women

Posted in Current Events, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on February 20, 2011| 43 Comments »

You can only be young once. But you can always be immature. –  Dave Barry

I’ve said it many times before; the most common request escort service operators get is “as young as possible,” and because of it most whores tend to lie about their ages.  And since in many countries prostitution is either illegal or legalized (i.e. technically legal but strangled and crippled by arbitrary laws), there is no way for a man to be sure whether the prostitute he hires is of legal age even if she looks as though she is, or underage even if she looks as though she isn’t.  Are there some men who would hire a girl even knowing full well she was underage?  Of course there are, just like there are some men who are willing to receive stolen goods, take bribes, use illegal drugs or otherwise step outside the bounds of legality even though they are otherwise not disposed toward criminality.  But if prostitution were treated as a normal trade only those men who really wanted to break the law would pursue underage whores, and the law could be reasonably sure that anyone caught with an illegally young hooker had done it on purpose.

Two wealthy and prominent men, one in Italy (where prostitution is legalized and restricted) and one in Arizona (where prostitution is criminalized) have recently been accused of consorting with underage prostitutes.  You would probably have to have been lost in the Amazon Basin for the past year not to have heard about Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s girl troubles, but they’ve recently grown worse: He’s been indicted on “child” prostitution charges for allegedly hiring a Moroccan dancer for sex when she was still 17.  Working in his favor:  Both he and the girl deny having had sex at all.  Working against him:  All three members of the tribunal are female.  The following is paraphrased from a February 15th article on Huffington Post :

The 74-year-old Italian premier, Silvio Berlusconi, was ordered Tuesday to stand trial on charges he paid a 17-year-old Moroccan girl for sex, and then used his influence to cover it up.  Berlusconi has called the allegations “groundless” and dismissed the case as a “farce,” accusing prosecutors of seeking to oust him from power.  The trial is set to begin April 6 before a panel of three female judges.  The indictment alleges Berlusconi paid for sex with the girl, who goes by the name Ruby, then used his influence to get her out of police custody when she was detained in connection with an unrelated theft of €3000.  Prosecutors claim Berlusconi called police the night of May 27-28, 2010 because he feared his relationship with the girl would be revealed, while the defense claims that Berlusconi intervened because he believed Ruby was Hosni Mubarak’s niece and was trying to prevent a diplomatic incident.  Both Berlusconi and the now 18-year-old nightclub dancer deny having had sex together.  In an interview on one of Berlusconi’s television stations Ruby said that she told the premier she was a 24-year-old Egyptian and that he gave her €7,000 the evening they met, and later jewelry.

Judge Cristina Di Censo handed down the indictment for immediate trial as prosecutors requested; this is only done in cases of overwhelming evidence and skips a preliminary hearing that alone can take nearly a year.  The child prostitution charge carries a possible prison term of six months to three years, but the abuse of influence charge carries a sentence of four to 12 years and if Berlusconi is sentenced to more than five, he would be barred from ever again holding public office.  The trial will follow the resumption of three other criminal cases involving Berlusconi’s business dealings, creating a legal mess as various parties try to schedule hearings amid Berlusconi’s commitments as head of government.  At the same time, a weakened Berlusconi will face the challenge of keeping coalition partners happy and attempting to repair his international reputation.

Most Italians have been tolerant of Berlusconi’s scandals, but last weekend more than a million women attended a protest against what they called his “denigrating treatment of women.”  And when his estranged wife Veronica Lario announced she was divorcing him in 2009, she cited his involvement with young women and promotion of starlets to lawmakers.  She also issued a plea to his friends to help him, saying “My husband is sick.”  However, Berlusconi has proven adept at riding out other legal charges in the past and may do so again.

Though there might be some kind of hard evidence for the “abuse of influence” charge, I’m not quite sure how the prosecutors intend to prove a prostitution charge when both parties claim not to have even had sex.  Here in the United States, however, grocery magnate Michael C. Gilliland may have a more difficult time of it considering the present climate of hysteria about “sex predators” and “child sex trafficking”; this story is paraphrased from one which appeared in the Arizona Republic on February 13th:

Sunflower Farmers Market founder and CEO Michael C. Gilliland has resigned from the company after being arrested Thursday (February 10th) in Phoenix on suspicion of felony child prostitution.  Phoenix Police Sergeant Steve Martos said Gilliland, 52, went to the hotel expecting to pay for sex with a person who had identified herself as an underage girl he had met online; the arrest was part of a weeklong operation that netted seven other arrests.  According to a company news release Gilliland told Sunflower he is not guilty and that he expects to be exonerated, and the company’s new acting CEO, Chris S. Sherrell, said “Sunflower appreciates the respect that Mr. Gilliland has shown for the company by his [resignation], so that his personal affairs will not affect the company.”

Note that there was no actual underage girl involved here, only an imaginary one, but I’m sure the trafficking fanatics will still claim it as evidence of 300,000 “trafficked children”.  If the charges turn out to be true, Gilliland acted not only criminally but carelessly; after all, it’s not like he couldn’t afford to hire a well-reviewed professional escort.  If prostitution were legal, would he have risked everything to push the age barrier by a few years?  Possibly, but we’ll never know.

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Life Imitates Artifice

Posted in Current Events, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 15, 2011| 20 Comments »

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble. –  Samuel Johnson

On Sunday I wrote a little about this article from The Dallas News of February 7th, and promised to say more about it today.  This time I’ll reproduce it as it appeared (though slightly edited for length) with interpolated comments, saving my main point for the end.

A felon from Austin forced a teenage girl and her adult sister to come work as prostitutes in Dallas because “there was big money to be made during Super Bowl,” according to police documents.  But Dallas police say they busted Anthony Ladell Winn, 35, before the sisters, ages 14 and 20, arranged any weekend dates.  “We’re very proud of the work on this one,” said Sgt. Byron Fassett of the Dallas Police Child Exploitation Squad.  “Any time that we can identify a child victim on the street involved in this, it is exceptional work, quite frankly.  It’s like finding a needle in a haystack.”  Winn was arrested early Sunday on felony charges of attempting to compel prostitution by force and trafficking of persons…

You’ve gotta love the way cops like to pretend their own job is harder than it is so they can then pat themselves on the back for doing it.  Cops see a 14-year-old girl streetwalking and get her to cooperate so they can catch her pimp, and then pretend some Holmesian deduction was involved.  This “needle in a haystack” poppycock of course also provides a ready-made excuse for all the imaginary traffickers they didn’t catch on account of their not actually existing.

Area authorities had been bracing for a possible influx of prostitutes and human trafficking victims in the run-up to Super Bowl XLV.  Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and the FBI pledged additional resources devoted to combating human trafficking last week.  Authorities say it can be extremely difficult to accurately measure whether such crimes spike and why.  However, early indications in Dallas are that there was not an obvious increase in reported prostitution cases, perhaps due in part to the icy and cold conditions, police said.

Yeah, that must be it.  Pimps spent all kind of money to “traffick” thousands of enslaved hookers into Dallas but didn’t bother to send them out on the streets because it was too cold.  “It can be extremely difficult to accurately measure…such crimes,” but that didn’t stop cops and officials from making ludicrous predictions despite the fact that no such spike has ever been recorded around a major sporting event anywhere in the world.

Dallas police reported 23 adult prostitution arrests from Wednesday through Sunday, though they noted they do not know how many were related to the festivities or people surrounding the Super Bowl.  “We didn’t see that as being a drastic increase in our normal enforcement numbers,” said Assistant Chief Tom Lawrence.  “We were trying to focus much more heavily on the locations where we thought there’d be a high level of parties, activities related to the Super Bowl.”

“Areas where there’d be a high level of parties?”  WTF?  I mean seriously, what is that even supposed to mean?  Restaurants?  Bars?  People’s hotel rooms spread all over the Dallas-Fort Worth area?  And what did that “focus” involve, sending out cops to look for women strolling around the stadium in high heels, fishnets and miniskirts in subzero temperatures?  I can tell you how many of those 23 prostitution arrests were “related” to the Super Bowl:  Zero.  They were just plain old streetwalker busts which happened to occur the same week.  The big talkers in Arlington were too embarrassed to admit their prostitution arrest figures until yesterday:  32 total “prostitution-related” arrests (note the attempt to pad the number to 59 by quoting 2½ weeks at one time), which obviously includes clients since only 22 were hookers and 3 “pimps” (possibly drivers or boyfriends).  Only 13 of the 59 were from out of town and NONE were juveniles.  Imagine that.

…For Fassett, whose squad handles sex crimes involving juveniles, the Winn case was the only arrest of its kind thought to be related to the Super Bowl.  “I don’t know that I saw on the street level any more activity than any other normal night that we would have run an operation,” said Fassett.  He acknowledged that “there’s no real statistical data to prove it one way or the other.”

But that didn’t stop us from uttering grandiose prophesies of hordes of hookers descending on the Metroplex like a Biblical plague, of course.  Obviously, Mr. Fassett doesn’t  understand advanced concepts like “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Investigators believe Winn met the sisters in Austin [and] had been prostituting the older sister for about a year and the younger sister for about a month…a few days ago, Winn and the older sister got into an argument because the woman did not want Winn prostituting her younger sister anymore…Winn punched the 20-year-old woman in the face and bit her twice on the arm, police said.  He then told the women “they were going to Dallas to prostitute for him” during the Super Bowl and that “there were men that would spend a lot,” the documents said.  Winn drove the women to the city Saturday morning, rented a northwest Dallas hotel room and sent them out to engage in prostitution.  He told them all the money they made would go to him, the documents said.  Dallas patrol officers came in contact with the sisters Saturday and investigators ran a sting operation on Winn, police said…

So, what gave this pimp wannabe the idea that “there was big money to be made during Super Bowl,” and “there were men that would spend a lot” on streetwalkers?  Any guesses?  It certainly wasn’t personal experience, nor anything he learned from the “organized crime” with which he obviously was not affiliated.  What gave him these ridiculous ideas was the constant media repetition of them.  In other words the trafficking fanatics, by their constant reiteration of the “Super Bowl as sex trafficking Mecca” mythology, put the notion into this violent loser’s otherwise-empty head.  Congratulations, trafficking fetishists; all the money and effort you expended on spreading your lies actually accomplished something:  You inspired a pimp to traffick an underage girl to the Super Bowl.  The same mechanism was obviously at work in the minds of the fanatics who staged this little escapade, paraphrased from a report in the Washington Times of February 1st:

A Planned Parenthood manager in Perth Amboy, New Jersey was secretly videotaped by an anti-abortion activist posing as a pimp supposedly trying to hide his “underage sex ring”.  A group calling itself “Live Action” was behind the scam, in which the “pimp” was accompanied by a woman who claimed to be a prostitute; the “pimp” claimed to be interested in obtaining abortions for girls around 14 or 15 years old who speak no English.  The clinic manager, identified only as “Ms. Woodruff”, gave advice to the fake “pimp”, saying “so long as they just lie … we just kind of play it stupid,” and explaining that they look past this because these girls still need the help, even if they are underage.

Planned Parenthood employees reported the visit to their higher management as soon as the “pimp” left, and according to a February 1st statement by Phyllis Kinsler, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Central New Jersey, “on that same day, prior to learning that these visits had also occurred in other states, the local Planned Parenthood affiliate notified local law enforcement in New Jersey.”  Upon learning that at least 12 more of its clinics have had instances where men have come in with similar stories involving sex-trafficking, the organization contacted the FBI.

But that didn’t stop “Live Action” from posting the edited video on its website and claiming it was evidence that Planned Parenthood facilitates “sex trafficking”.  Kinsler said that despite the lack of any “cover-up” as alleged by the activists, “the behavior of our employee, as portrayed on the video, if accurate, violates PPCNJ policies, as well as our core values of protecting the welfare of minors and complying with the law, and appropriate action is being taken.”

As it turned out, the audio was doctored and the manager did nothing wrong. Trafficking fetishists aren’t doing anything to help real victims, but their omnipresent mythology is beginning to inspire various unscrupulous creeps to attempt to live out a sexual fantasy of being “pimps” with enslaved “hos”, either in earnest as in the Dallas case or as part of the same kind of bogeyman deception practiced by the “trafficking” fanatics themselves.  I’m sure they must be proud of themselves; on a small scale at least, they’re beginning to make their warped vision of the world a reality.

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January Q & A

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Q & A, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 31, 2011| 10 Comments »

That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer. –  Jacob Bronowski

It’s time for another round of questions sent in by my readers; if you have a question for me please send it to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net and I’ll answer it next month.

You mentioned in one of your blogs you’re not a big fan of either  cunnilingus or analingus, why is that?  I’ve had women tell me that they can’t relax enough because they are worried about how they smell down there, is that a major concern for some women?

Actually, I like analingus on me just fine; I just refuse to do it to a man.  I don’t care for cunnilingus for the simple reason that I can’t usually climax that way; once in a blue moon somebody puts enough pressure on the clit to accomplish it but generally not.  And even when it works it’s totally unsatisfying for me, like the “junk food” of sex; I just don’t really feel satisfied unless I’m penetrated, so I could never be an exclusive lesbian no matter how much I like girls.  As for the second part of your question…oh, definitely!  Even with my experience, and despite the thousands of times I’ve been told how sweet I taste, it still makes me tense until I’m sure the guy is really getting into it.  You have to understand how paranoid women are about hygiene, and those who watch too many TV commercials are even worse.

You mentioned once that you had electrolysis on your bikini line; is that hair permanently gone or do you need to touch up down there?

Those who saw my picture on December 17th probably noticed that my skin is extremely fair and my hair rather dark; this is a deadly combination because even when one shaves one’s legs, the stubble is clearly visible under the skin.  As a teenager I existed in a permanent state of mortification over this issue; I had no aversion to miniskirts because I just wore hose with them, but informal shorts were out and so was daytime swimming (though I loved pool parties after dark).  So in my early twenties I decided to start experimenting with other means of hair removal.  I had already discovered Nair did absolutely nothing for me, nor did any other common depilatory, so I tried the stronger ones and left them on for twice the suggested length; I got chemical burns on my skin but the hair stubbornly remained.  I tried sugaring (which worked great but was expensive and time-consuming), home waxing (ditto) and this crazy mitt thing that was supposed to rub the hair off, but none of it really satisfied me.

Then I discovered that boon to womankind, the epilator, a device which looks sort of like an electric shaver but has a rotating head covered with little tweezers; one runs it over one’s legs and it literally plucks the hairs out by the roots.  They take quite a while to grow back and when they do they’re finer and lighter.  The first time I ever used the epilator I was smart enough to do it one day after shaving my legs, so the hairs were very short; I did it twice the first week and then once per week ever since.  The first time it was very uncomfortable (some might say a bit painful but I have a high threshold of pain), the third time only slightly uncomfortable, and by the fifth or sixth week I barely felt it.  I was (and still am) absolutely delighted with it; after 15 years of weekly use I no longer have any leg or arm hair to speak of, though I still epilate every Tuesday to clear off the peachfuzz my husband swears exists only in my imagination.

When I first started stripping I had electrolysis on my bikini line, eyebrows and underarms (I had so few hairs there to start with I just figured I’d get them permanently zapped).  Electrolysis is indeed permanent but since I still have hair along my labia I just get it with the epilator.  Since as you might expect that area is much more sensitive than my legs it was pretty painful the first half-dozen times, but as my Maman used to say “You have to suffer for beauty”.  And after all these years, I barely notice it any more unless I carelessly get too close to the remaining triangle of public hair; that, I notice.

I just heard about the “Video Vigilante”; is what this guy does legal? It seems like stalking if you ask me.

The soi-disant “Video Vigilante”, Brian Bates, is a perfect example of reaction formation; he is an Oklahoma City man who is so obsessed with streetwalkers that he has spent huge amounts of his time for the past 14 years driving around areas they frequent, videotaping men who try to pick them up and then turning the videos in to the cops as “evidence” and also posting them on his website “JohnTV”.  Clearly, this is not a mentally healthy person, but unfortunately under Oklahoma law his behavior is mostly legal because he videotapes events which occur in public.  A few years ago he was accused of paying streetwalkers to set up potential clients so he could tape them, but the charges were eventually dismissed because, though highly credible,  they appeared to be the result of a long-standing feud between Bates, the police and Oklahoma City District Attorney Wes Lane.

Other states have different rules about public videotaping by individuals; a number of them consider the act to be essentially similar to wiretapping and so apply the rules of consent which regulate the latter to the former as well.  Illinois’ wiretap law, the strictest in the country, requires both parties of a conversation consent to being recorded, and this also applies to videotaping.  That sounds wonderful until one realizes that it means videotaping occasions of police brutality is a felony unless the cop consents to the taping (hah!), and the city of Chicago has on a number of occasions charged bystanders and even victims with this law in order to prevent their actions being exposed publicly as has become so common in other states.

But in Oklahoma it’s business as usual for the Video Voyeur, who continues his weird antics to the present day and apparently only takes breaks to go on self-promotion tours and talk shows.

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Wild Guessing (Part One)

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 27, 2011| 12 Comments »

We should know clearly before we discuss this matter; to guess is one thing, to know clearly another. –  Aeschylus

Regular readers will remember the Schapiro Group, a marketing firm which specializes in producing bogus “studies” to prove whatever it is their clients want them to prove, often by the use of redefinition (such as the study in which an “adolescent” was defined as someone under 22) and guessing.  In my column of November 29th I dissected their “study” on what they term “CSEC” (Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children) in Georgia, which claimed to “prove” that 58% of prostitution transactions in Georgia were conducted with “trafficked children” (i.e., prostitutes under 18 who may actually be of legal age of consent), but actually proved absolutely nothing except that the Schapiro Group thinks its readers are fools.  Well, they’re at it again; Brandy Devereaux called my attention to a new study by these same con artists, this one paid for by a group calling itself the “Dallas Women’s Foundation”.  The study is just as fundamentally flawed as the last one, but even more insulting to its reader because it attempts to justify wild-ass guessing (WAG) as a valid determiner of the age of a woman in a photograph; the approach was first used in a previous scam (excuse me, “study”) published last May for the “Women’s Funding Network”, and indeed most of the new paper is lifted directly from the older one (I guess the Schapiro Group believes in recycling).

As before, the report opens by redefining young women as children, but this time (perhaps in response to criticism of its previous boondoggles) the authors actually attempt to justify the redefinition:  “There are several ways to define a ‘child’ according to federal and state laws. Not only does  ‘under age 18’ align with important federal laws defining childhood, but it is a definition widely accepted among the general public.”  In other words, “because many ignorant Americans confuse the term ‘child’ with the term ‘legal minor’ we’re going to let the error stand since it serves our purposes, even though we know quite well that not only are they different concepts, but that the age of consent in Texas is 17.”

It is safe to say that this research methodology is designed to count, over a one-month period, the number of  adolescent females who are acutely commercially sexually exploited, and actively marketed within the local sex trade…collectively the results indicate a significant number of  adolescent girls caught in the Texas sex trade during the month: 28 through escort services [and] 712 through Internet classifieds websites.

No, it’s safe to say (as the reader will soon see) that the methodology is not designed to “count” anything, but rather to produce the exact results the authors wish it to produce, as revealed by the fact that these numbers don’t remotely reflect the percentage of adolescents among arrested prostitutes in Texas or anywhere else.

To understand why it is difficult to study CSEC, it is instructive to define it, as CSEC is both simple and challenging to define.

Translation:  “We have to figure out how to define it so as to prove what we have been paid to prove despite the facts.”

There have been documented attempts to quantify the problem of  commercial sexual exploitation of  children in the United States, however very few of  these involve direct empirical investigations…Most academic and government quantifications represent educated guesswork.

No, most of them represent numbers made up from whole cloth in order to support a panic in the ignorant populace so the government can justify prohibitionist laws against whores.  This represents educated guesswork, and as you can see it generates far more realistic numbers.  Scientific detachment does not produce language like this:

…the majority of  girls trapped in the industry are in their teenage years.  Johns soliciting these girls are engaging in a despicable act, but typically not because the johns are pedophiles.  It seems that most of  the girls they solicit are, in a biological sense, sexually mature.  In fact, it is distinctly possible that johns looking for “young” girls sometimes do not know that the young woman they are soliciting is actually under age 18.  One critical aspect of  this study shows just how dramatically people fundamentally overestimate the ages of  girls posing in mildly provocative ways.  Adolescent girls still appear quite young—which we also document as central to their appeal to johns—but often do not appear to be unambiguously younger than 18.

The authors fully admit that it’s extremely difficult to know the age of a girl by her picture, and also that many teenage girls are sexually mature, yet still insist on referring to male attraction to such girls as “despicable”!  And of course the fact that it’s 100% legal for a man in Texas to have sex with a 17-year-old is ignored; I guess that law is “despicable” as well (what must they think of Hawaii and Idaho?)  Anyhow, it only degenerates from there; the next section insists on using emotionally-loaded but semantically-poor terms like “exploited” and making broad and totally unsupportable statements like “children…are regarded as nothing more than assets to their exploiters” (not to mention self-congratulatory ones like “the study is a quantum leap forward in determining…the magnitude of  the problem”) while continuing to maintain the pretense of scientific methodology.  And here’s the methodology:

When researchers count events that occur at varying degrees of  uncertainty, they typically count probabilities rather than discrete cases.  For a simple example, consider a drawer of  40 identically shaped red and blue marbles.  Imagine trying to count the number of  red marbles while wearing a blindfold.  This, obviously, is an impossible task.  If we knew from previous experience, however, that 25% of  the marbles are red, we would count each marble—without seeing its true color—as .25 red.  We count each of  the 40 marbles in the drawer this way, and sum up the red probabilities to arrive at a red count of 10 marbles.  The problem is, there is no scientifically reliable previous experience on which to base the probability that a girl selling sex who looks quite young is, indeed, under 18 years.  Therefore, we conducted a separate study to serve as this previous experience.

Like all good con artists, the Schapiro Group begins the scam with a reasonable-sounding proposition.  By the authors’ own admission there is no way to objectively know which percentage of whores are under an arbitrary age, so there can be no “previous experience”.  In part two tomorrow, I’ll show you the sophistry they designed in order to trick the careless reader into accepting the proposition that WAGs at girls’ ages are actually “scientific evidence”.  In the meantime, take a look at the article and see how many flaws you can find in it; to list all of them would take a whole week of this blog!

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Holiday Leftovers

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 7, 2011| 9 Comments »

To those who have exhausted politics, nothing remains but abstract thought. –  Honoré De Balzac

A collection of links and comments leftover from the twelve days of Christmas.

Update: Lying Down With Dogs

Remember my column about how the US seems bound and determined to align itself with third-world countries and oppressive regimes?  Well, this article is sort of a reverse example, because while in Afghanistan organizations which protect women from abuse are accused by the media of promoting prostitution, in the US prostitutes’ rights organizations are accused by the media of promoting abuse of women.  Is one so different from the other?

Am I Missing Something?

In this article from the New York Post, we read that a 24-year-old Manhattan woman named Lily Shang has filed suit against her estranged husband, 26-year-old David Glenn Rucker, after he threatened to post sex videos they took together on the internet (though he plans to edit himself out).  Leaving aside for a moment the issue of their ages (which supports my contention that men shouldn’t marry until at least 30 and women until at least 25), what I want to know is how this is even one particle different from this story I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.  Yes, the stories are by two different writers, and yes, the latter are celebrities while the former aren’t, but otherwise what’s the difference?  How is a man using the threat of releasing a sex tape in order to lower his divorce settlement any worse than a woman using the exact same threat to raise hers?  In my opinion both threats are equally reprehensible, and if I were the judge I’d throw the book at the one making such a threat, but then I believe in justice.  Of course I also believe in Santa Claus, so what do I know?

How Exactly is This is Different From Every Other Year Since the Dawn of Civilization?

Lisa France of CNN says 2010 was “The Year of the Mistress”, and claims celebrity mistresses were a bigger story last year than in other years.  No offense, Lisa, but were you educated in a convent?  Did you somehow miss the fact that wealthy men have always had mistresses, that it’s always a scandal when others find out, and that such scandals have always been wildly popular with the hoi-polloi at least since the invention of the printing press?

Really Cheap Whores

Former Playmate and Hugh Hefner “girlfriend” Izabella St James reveals in her new book just how cheaply Playmates sell their favors:  $1000 a week, and not for easy work either.  For comparison purposes, I’ll mention that my fee for an entire week was $8000.  True, Hef also gave them plastic surgery and the possibility of a centerfold gig, but considering that none of my plastic surgeries cost over $5000 I hardly think that makes up for their getting paid one-eighth what a New Orleans call girl could command.  And that’s even more true when one factors in Hef’s baby oil obsession and preference for anal cowgirl.

Update:  My Body, My Choice

In my column of November 19th I pointed out that Roe vs. Wade established that a woman’s right to privacy includes her right to own and control her body, and since the sexes supposedly have equal protection under American law it also establishes that a man has a right to own and control his body.  And though many states argue otherwise, it clearly establishes the right to suicide; if it’s legal to end the life of a dependent fetus, how can it not be legal to end one’s own?  The contradiction is a logical and legal absurdity.  Yet the state of Connecticut argues that it has the right to force-feed a prison inmate named William Coleman who wishes to starve himself to death to protest what he says is his wrongful conviction on a charge of raping his ex-wife…a charge she only made after consulting a divorce lawyer when Coleman sought sole custody of their children.  Maybe, as some commenters on the story suggest, it’s a grandstand play, but when the state of Connecticut tried to make the problem go away by offering Coleman parole, he refused on the grounds that to sign the papers would constitute admitting his guilt.  Obviously we don’t know what happened, but I think the timing of the events and his refusal to accept parole lend considerable credibility to his story.  And it isn’t like he’s asking for a retrial or pardon, though I’m sure he’d accept either; all he’s asking for is the right to end his own life, as established under international law.  The state of Connecticut’s case is apparently based on the claim that Coleman’s actions infringe on its right to torture him for as long as it pleases, or perhaps because he has dared to call attention to the fact that courts are not infallible.  Many women seem unable to even consider the possibility that any rape accusations might be false, a problem whose implications were discussed by Furry Girl in a recent column, but this isn’t even about that; even if he’s as guilty as a cat with a mouthful of feathers, he still retains the right to end his own life rather than submit to torture.  And the state has no right to torture anyone, not even a rapist or someone accused of espionage.

Dutch Treat

Though this article was published in mid-November, it only came to my attention over the holidays. Maybe the reason Dutch women are so accepting of prostitution is that they realize that for a woman to pursue a male-style career is really kind of stupid unless it’s really, truly what she wants and not just what neofeminist-influenced society has forced her into.  One of the reasons many of us take up prostitution is that, like the Dutch women in this article, we recognize that there are a lot more interesting and fulfilling things to do with one’s life than climbing the corporate ladder and sitting in a cubicle all day.

Devil’s Advocate

How old are you, and how good is your memory?  Can you remember the way male writers of the ‘60s and ‘70s used to ridicule feminist complaints?  Admittedly, some of the rhetoric of those early feminists was overblown, histrionic and even a bit silly (e.g. “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”), but most of those women had legitimate grievances that were no less legitimate because they were awkwardly or emotionally expressed.  And if those male writers had taken the time to look beneath the surface and to strive to understand why women were acting that way instead of just insulting them and dismissing their feelings, the “gender war” might never have happened and we’d all be a lot better off today.  With that in mind, take a look at this Jezebel article and its follow-up.  I guess some people will call it “turnabout is fair play”, but IMHO the appropriate aphorism would be “those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.”

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December Q & A

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Q & A, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on December 28, 2010| 23 Comments »

The question you’re not supposed to ask is the important one. –  Mason Cooley

Our first question was posted in a new comment on an old post by a reader who resides in the Netherlands:  Just today, when we were coming back home from a restaurant, my 8-year-old daughter, out of the blue, asked: “Daddy, what’s a prostitute?”  Before I could answer, my mother-in-law (who went with me, my wife and my daughter to the restaurant) launched into a short description of the standard stereotype (“pariahs…” “dirty…” “horrible lives…” “bad women…”).  Since I don’t think it’s a good idea for adults to fight in front of children, I let her go and kept silent. I’m still thinking about what I should tell my daughter later on… and how long I should wait.  Any advice?

At her age, you might try something like this: “Sometimes men get lonely when they don’t have girlfriends, and a prostitute is a lady whose job is to keep them company for a little while so they won’t feel so lonely.” It’s inexact, but it covers the basics in terms an 8-year-old can grasp. I wouldn’t wait too long; since your mother-in-law has already said something you might explain that some people think prostitutes are bad because they think they’re trying to fool the men, but that isn’t really true.

If your daughter responds with something like “That sounds nice, I want to be a prostitute when I grow up,” you might say something like, “Well, it’s sometimes hard work, and some people might think you’re bad if you do it, so it’s probably best to wait until you’re grown up to think about that.”  After all, you wouldn’t want her going around telling people her daddy said she could be a prostitute when she grows up!

I don’t see escorts very often, but I treated myself the other day; she was a polite and reasonably attractive brunette, a little older than me.  Unfortunately she wasn’t very tight down there, so with a condom on it was hard to get any friction going to keep it hard. I was able to finish but it took A LOT of work on my part.  I’ve never experienced that with any woman before; I know each person is different but when you ran your own agency did you get complaints of  workers being “too loose”?

Everybody is indeed different, and some women are large to start with, but the degree of looseness you describe almost certainly resulted from having babies (especially if they were large or the births were difficult).  Contrary to popular belief no amount of intercourse can loosen a woman permanently like babies can, not even several times a day for years.  The lady you saw could probably have restored much of her tightness with Kegels exercises, and if that proved insufficient there is plastic surgery which can do the trick.  Either way, if she intends to stay in the business she probably should do something about the issue or she’s going to get more complaints than she might like.  I never received any complaints like that on any girl I employed, and certainly not on myself!  But then, I was small to start with, never had babies and perform my Kegels religiously.

I’m a new reader to your blog with a question, and I was just curious as to what you would define as a slut? Is a slut just a promiscuous woman who isn’t a whore or something else? Also, is a slut the same thing as a nymphomaniac?

I don’t really care for the term “slut” myself because I feel it’s both pejorative and imprecise, but if I were going to define it I’d say a “slut” is a woman who is promiscuous without a profit motive.  I think, however, that the average man uses it to mean any woman he wants to insult (regardless of her behavior) and the average woman uses it to mean any woman who is more promiscuous than she is!  Given that, I just don’t feel it’s a really useful term even if it weren’t so judgmental.

However you use it, though, a nymphomaniac is definitely something different; nymphomania is a psychological disorder which causes the sufferer to be obsessed with sex and to have a sex drive so high that it causes her distress and serious problems.  Nymphomaniacs are usually unable to maintain relationships for obvious reasons; the behavior is compulsive and thus results in trouble like any other compulsive behavior.  Therefore, you might say a nymphomaniac is to a slut what a kleptomaniac is to a thief and a pyromaniac is to an arsonist.  Incidentally, the term “nymphomania” applies only to women; the corresponding disorder in men is called “satyriasis”.

What does it mean on a escorts ad if it says willing to see basic plus one or two?

Preferred 411 (P411 for short) is a verification service which does a background check on its male members, so if you’re even a basic member girls know you aren’t a cop or other type of liar.  Whenever an escort member sees a client member she can give him an “okay”; the more “okays” the more girls he has seen who will vouch that he’s an acceptable client (not abusive or scary).  So “basic plus two” means she’ll only see a guy who has two or more okays.

My husband wants to try anal sex but I’m afraid it will hurt.  Is there a right way to do it so it doesn’t?

There sure is; you’ve got to relax.  Ask your man to follow your instructions exactly, and use plenty of lubrication (I don’t care what you’ve read, spit is NOT enough).  Make sure he’s rock-hard; semi-soft won’t work for anal.  Tell him to put it inside you just until you start feeling discomfort, then stop and hold it right there; this is the part where trust comes in, because a man’s natural instinct once he’s inside is to start stroking and if he does it will hurt you.  Remain in that position, breathe regularly, and calm yourself; within a minute or two your sphincter will relax and the discomfort will pass.  Then tell him to start stroking, slowly at first until you adjust to the feeling, then give him the go-ahead and tell him not to hold back.  This form of sex is VERY intense and you won’t want it for more than a few minutes.  Done correctly, it is very pleasurable for both partners and can be an interesting variation on your regular lovemaking.

A note to my male readers:  If your wife or girlfriend doesn’t want to try anal, don’t coerce her because if she gives in just to placate you she will NOT be able to relax and it will be a bad experience for both of you.  Tell her you would like it, ask her to consider it and even show her this column, but beyond that leave it alone.  If she agrees, follow her instructions exactly and don’t hold back once she tells you to start stroking, but climax as soon as the urge strikes you; anal sex is like cheesecake, best enjoyed in small servings.

Would you rather have a guy who was well endowed but so-so in bed or smaller but a studly lover?  I’ve always wanted to ask a lady who knew what she was talking about and I consider you a subject matter expert.

Thanks for the vote of confidence!  It’s hard to answer that because it really depends on so many factors.  I personally am not really a connoisseur of male sexual skills; I just enjoy being “screwed into the mattress” as Amanda Brooks says.  But many other women do appreciate technique.  Plus, if I’m in love with a man none of that matters two cents, and I’m not remotely alone in that opinion.  In the final analysis, only guys with really, really tiny cocks need to worry about the issue at all, and even a man like that could be compatible with a woman who loves cunnilingus above all else.

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Christmas Eve

Posted in Holidays, Miscellaneous, Philosophy, tagged , , , , on December 24, 2010| 13 Comments »

Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas. –  Calvin Coolidge

When I was a wee lass, Christmas was pure magic.  We always set up our tree on the day after Thanksgiving, and that was also when the cultural signs started; Christmas decorations went up in stores and on houses, television stations started airing Christmas specials, kids started thinking about our letters to Santa Claus, radio stations started adding Christmas songs into rotation and people started cashing in their Christmas clubs at banks.  And in New Orleans, the Maison Blanche department store would set up its vast and fantastic Christmas display, a wondrous tableau of animated characters and music which stretched from the front windows all the way to Santa’s throne.  Every year we made the drive into town to see Santa there, and the long wait in line did not matter at all because we were so absorbed in the display.

The star of that show (and of a series of long-form commercials which aired during the season) was Mr. Bingle, a magical “snow fairy” puppet operated and voiced by Oscar Isentrout, a drifter from Brooklyn who fell in love with 1940s New Orleans and never left.  And I think it says something about the Big Easy’s style that the veritable voice of Christmas in New Orleans for over 30 years was Jewish.  Every morning during the Christmas season I’d get up extra early on school days so I could be ready for school and sitting in my little plaid skirt in front of the television set to see Mr. Bingle, and at night I anxiously looked forward to specials like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus is Coming to Town and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  Every year my father’s employer threw a very generous Christmas party for employees and their families, with food, entertainment, gifts and of course Santa; how well I remember those!  Despite my precociousness in other areas I steadfastly continued to believe in Santa well past the time when most of my classmates had given up on him, and I remember crying when my brain would no longer allow me that level of faith.

But as the years have gone by, Christmas has changed; the commercialism which Charlie Brown bemoaned in his Christmas special (which first aired the year before I was born) has now completely taken over the holiday, and most of the magic has been lost as a result.  Though many of the signs of Christmas I loved (such as the Maison Blanche Christmas promotion) were certainly motivated by commercial concerns, they were not “the reason for the season” but rather helped to enhance it.  But now it’s all about shopping; Christmas displays start going up on November 1st, and many have referred to Thanksgiving as a “forgotten holiday”, overshadowed even by what is vulgarly (and endlessly) referred to as “Black Friday”.  You know, that day we used to call “the day after Thanksgiving”, which was once merely the official start of the Christmas season but is now touted as an observance in its own right.  The endless urging to buy buy buy, the artificial sense of urgency, the stress caused by overspending on far too many gifts (we used to get one gift from Santa and one from our parents, plus a few small gifts in the stocking), the whining by Christians that it’s their holiday and they want it back, the hand-wringing by multiculturalists who agree with the Christians and therefore insist on draining every vestige of traditional symbolism out of the observance, and all the other modern enemies of the Christmas spirit conspire to reduce it to an “autumn shopping season” rather than a time to be happy and to show love to friends and family and goodwill to strangers.

In other words, like so many other things in the modern world, Christmas has expanded in quantity while dramatically decreasing in quality.  The old Christmas was roughly 30 days of sweetness and magic, while the new “holiday buying season” is 60+ days of saccharine hype.  The old celebration was nutritious to the soul, while the new one actually leaches spiritual vitality.  And while the old one was organic and aromatic, the new one is wholly synthetic and entirely lacking in any bouquet other than fake pine scent to be sprayed on artificial Christmas trees.

It doesn’t have to be this way.  The hype can be avoided by turning off the TV set (or at least avoiding commercials by fast-forwarding prerecorded shows), tossing sales flyers and setting one’s spam filters to reject any rubbish with “Black Friday” or “Cyber Monday” in the subject line.  The crush and stress can be avoided by shopping early and/or online, and the joys of a simpler time can be recaptured by watching favorite old Christmas shows and movies on DVD while munching on homemade (NOT store bought) gingerbread men or Christmas cookies and drinking cocoa or egg nog.  Watch Norad track Santa Claus on its website (as of this posting he’s about to cross from Thailand into Cambodia).  Think back to your own childhood, and bring those fun and magical activities back.  Even if everyone around you is eating tasteless, frozen TV dinners, there’s nothing to stop you from cooking a real meal, and so it is with Christmas; just because everyone else has swallowed the prefab commercial “holiday” doesn’t mean you have to as well.  This is a time of joy, celebration and renewal, and you’ll be much happier if you treat it as such. Because that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

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A Yuletide Fictional Interlude

Posted in Call types, Fiction, Philosophy, tagged , , , , , on December 19, 2010| 11 Comments »

As my regular readers know, once a month I publish a little fantasy tale whose protagonist is a whore.  These have mostly been stories of conflict and courage, but since this is Christmas I wanted to do something a little different; this one is probably best described as “whimsical”, perhaps even (dare I say it?) “cute”.  Some may find it a little bittersweet.  Please don’t judge it too harshly; while most of my stories are multi-layered pastries, this is just a Christmas cookie.  If you like it (and even if you don’t), you may be interested in my other stories.

Christmas Belle

Dear Maggie,

You’ve been pressing me for an explanation for months now, and since you are my best friend I believe I owe it to you.  Everybody thought they were funny with their jokes about “Saint Noel” until somebody realized that I was giving most of my income away, and in the past few months I seem to have developed a sort of aura which genuinely intimidates some customers.  Well, I’ll tell you how it started; you probably won’t really believe me, but I swear it happened just as I’m going to tell it to you.

I don’t need to tell you how much I love Christmas; I was born on Christmas Day, and I’ve always paid my bills in advance all year so I have plenty to give to charity in the Christmas season. My stage name isn’t “Noel” by accident, you know!  Well, on the day after Christmas last year I had an appointment which started out wrong by all reasonable standards; I don’t do same-day appointments, and I never work Christmas week, and he had no references whatsoever.  But when I checked my emails that morning, feeling lazy and just a little depressed as I always do that day, it stood out from the other messages in my inbox:

Dear Noel,

I know this is very short notice, but I’ll only be in town tonight and you come very, very highly recommended.  I’d love to spend the evening with you, and I’m more than willing to pay extra for having inconvenienced you.  Please let me know as soon as you can, and I’ll understand if the answer is no.

Very Truly Yours, Peter

All in all, it was no different from lots of other emails I get, but somehow I knew this was not a typical appointment request, and my intuition told me he was fine.  But even so, I’m no dumbbell; I replied asking for references and a phone number.  Within minutes he shot this back:

Dear Noel,

I’m afraid I don’t do this very often, and the last lady I visited has long since retired.  My phone number is xxx-xxx-xxxx, and if it would make you feel more comfortable we can meet for tea this afternoon first (I’ll pay you for that time as well, of course).  Thank you for considering me!

Very Truly Yours, Peter

I searched the phone number and it turned out to be a prepaid one; he could be anybody.  But my instincts told me he was a sincere and lonely gentleman and that I wouldn’t regret meeting him.  So I picked up my phone and called the number.

“Hello?”  What a strange voice he had!  Definitely an older man but with an odd timbre, and I couldn’t place the accent at all.

“Peter?  This is Noel.”

He couldn’t hide his excitement.  “Noel!  I’m so glad you called!  I apologize for the irregularity of my request, but as I said I have to leave town in the morning.”

“That’s all right,” I said; “I usually don’t see people this week, but you seem very nice.  You said I came highly recommended; did you mean by reviews or by a personal friend?”

“By my employer, actually.  He’s never seen you professionally, but he’s familiar with your reputation.”  The conversation went on for a while; he was unswervingly polite, asked no leading questions, did absolutely nothing to set off even the smallest warning bell.  And I have to admit my bank account could definitely use an all-nighter with a bonus right then!  So I decided to go for it, and we set the appointment for 5 PM; he reminded me to dress warmly and asked me to wear comfortable shoes.

He was extremely punctual, and when I opened my door I could see why he had requested flats; as short as I am, I was still a head taller than he was!  He was somewhere in middle age, with a full but perfectly-groomed beard and dark, smiling eyes.  He had a swarthy complexion, yet didn’t really have the features or accent of an Arab, and he wore a three-piece suit of dark green velvet in a very old-fashioned cut; I could see a watch chain at his vest pocket and he had a Homburg hat in one hand and a pot of poinsettias in the other. All in all, he presented quite a spectacle! I invited him in, gave him a hug, thanked him for the flowers and placed them on my table; I then asked if he would like something to drink but he declined politely, and handed me a very small gift-wrapped box. It was surprisingly heavy for its size; I sat down next to him, opened it and found it contained my fee…three one-ounce Maple Leaf coins, which at current gold prices is a generous gift even for an all-nighter.  He smiled at my astonishment and suggested I put them in my safe before we went out.

I’m not exaggerating when I tell you it was my best professional date ever; we went to my favorite restaurant and he urged me to order whatever I wanted, and we didn’t leave for a long time.  Not that the staff minded; he was an amazingly charismatic little gentleman who called the waiter by name, thanked him for his service and sent a complimentary note to the chef.  After dinner we had coffee and dessert, and I noticed his generous tip was left in old silver certificates.  When we finally left the restaurant we walked downtown for a while, looking at the decorations and listening to the Christmas music coming from the audio systems of shops and cafes; once we came across some kids building a snowman and neither of us hesitated to pitch in and help.

Eventually we got back to my place, and though it was past eleven and we had walked for what must’ve been miles in the snow I wasn’t tired at all; my hands and feet were frozen but my heart was warm, and I asked him to relax by the fireplace as I made cocoa.  Then we sat there for hours, sipping cocoa and eating Christmas cookies; we talked about morality and altruism, about consensual reality and the power of belief, about planes of existence and the truths that often lurk behind legends, and other such topics.  And then at some point we cuddled up together quietly before the fire, and I fell asleep in his arms.

When I awoke he was nowhere to be found; he had quietly cleaned up the cups and plates while I slept and stolen away sometime before dawn, leaving nothing but a short note:

Dearest Natalie,

There are no words in any human tongue to describe what a wonderful time I had last night.  I work very hard all year, and my holidays are rare; thank you for helping me to relax and for affording me the company of such a beautiful soul as yourself.  With your permission I’d like to see you again next year on this same day.

Very Truly Yours, Peter

As I looked at the note, two things dawned on me; the first was that he had addressed me by my real name, though I had never given him any other than “Noel”.  And the second was that, though he was obviously totally satisfied with the date, neither of us had at any point completely disrobed.

Ever since then I’ve been inspired to try to keep the Christmas spirit all year long, and though it’s been tough at times it’s also been tremendously rewarding.  Yes, I’ve given a lot of my money to charities, but I make so much that even the part I keep is more than most people outside our profession earn and the feeling I get in return is better than anything I could get from more jewelry or another designer dress.  Well, a few days ago I got another email from Peter; his boss has heard of my efforts and is so impressed that he’s offered me a full-time job.  The money’s not as good as in escorting, and I’ll have to move way up north, but I’ll be part of one of the biggest charitable organizations in the world and the fringe benefits are literally fantastic.  I’ll miss you sweetheart, but don’t worry; we can exchange emails as often as you like, and I’ll come to visit every December 26th.

Love, Natalie

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Bits and Pieces (Part One)

Posted in Current Events, News, Perception, The Dark Side, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 9, 2010| 12 Comments »

So many men, so little time. –  Mae West

There’s been another explosion of short news stories of note lately, none of which are really long enough (or quite topical enough) to merit a column; one might describe them as stocking stuffers if Santa was in a really strange mood and mixed coal in with treats.  We’ll start with the top story, released yesterday:

Derrick Burts, the porn actor who tested HIV positive in October has outed himself and now demands that condoms should be required in all porn.  The 24-year-old opportunist performed under the names Cameron Reid and Derrick Chambers, but now claims that “he wishes he had known more about the risks of contracting sexually transmitted diseases in the industry.”  Burts claims that he contracted HIV during oral sex in a gay porn shot in Florida, but isn’t sure.  Condoms had been used for penetration in that instance, as it often is in gay porn, but not during oral sex.  He claims that AIM told him that they’d traced his infection to a “known positive” but wouldn’t tell him who it was, citing patient confidentiality; AIM denies that and said Burts was told he’d contracted HIV through personal activity.  Predictably, Burts denies that, claiming “There is no possible way.  The only person I had sex with in my personal life was my girlfriend.”  But in the months before he tested positive for HIV, he had also contracted chlamydia, gonorrhea and herpes.  Burts also claims that AIM deliberately misled the public to try to tamp down fears about infection in the industry, and excuses the fact that he now works for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation by claiming that AIM didn’t follow up for his care.

Am I the only one who is incredibly disgusted by people who get hurt due to their own adult choices and then react by loudly advocating that the nanny state henceforth deny those same choices to others?  A gay guy born several years after AIDS was first discovered now claims he didn’t know you could get HIV through unprotected sex?  Either he’s incredibly stupid or he thinks everyone else is.  His claim that AIM told him that he contracted HIV through oral sex (despite the fact that, as I have said before, there has never been a single documented case of oral HIV transmission) is even less credible than his claim to his beard that he wasn’t screwing other guys outside of film sets.  And his going to work for the moralistic control freaks at AHC demonstrates that he can’t tell the difference between professional nudity and personal transparency.

Melissa Petro, on the other hand, apparently can; in a new column on Huffington Post she reveals that she was completely open about her background when applying to be a teacher:

I was also a former sex worker.  Of this, I made no secret.  My academic and creative writing has appeared in numerous publications online and in print since 2006.  My work is included in the NY Times acclaimed anthology Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys:  Professionals Writing on Love, Sex, Money and Work as well as in Sex Work Matters: Power and Intimacy in the Sex Industry.  I have presented at multiple conferences on the issue of women’s participation in the sex industry and regularly participate in literary readings around the city.  My thesis at the New School, completed the same semester I was accepted into the Fellows program, was entitled “Selling Sex.”

It was not until the tabloid New York Post decided to out her that the school suddenly decided her “sex rays” were dangerous to children.  I still believe that Miss Petro was incredibly unwise in revealing her past with her real name and picture, but in light of these revelations I’m willing to consider the possibility that her actions may have been due to incredible naivety about the trustworthiness of the bureaucrats who run the public school system rather than the desire to court publicity via self-martyrdom.

I’m not so willing to give Annie Lobert the benefit of the doubt, since she is obviously another member of the “do as I say, not as I do” club.  She’s also completely full of shit, because even though she claims to have been an escort for 16 years before being “born again”, she spouts neofeminist drivel about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder mixed with Bible-beating and TV-friendly nonsense about “pimps”; her so-called “Prostitution Glossary” contains not ONE SINGLE TERM from the escort world, unlike the real one which appeared in my column of September 7th.  I have no idea if these terms are real ones from the narrow little world of pimped streetwalkers, but even if they are how the hell does a former escort know about them and why is she representing them as general industry terms?  Either she’s lying about having been an escort or lying about our lives to pander to the male “pimps and hos” masturbatory fantasy; either one constitutes “bearing false witness” in my book.  Shame, shame, Annie; Jesus doesn’t like liars.

Speaking of popular delusions about harlotry, Huffington Post recently featured a two-part series about an NPR radio program about “child sex trafficking” (i.e. underage prostitution) in Oakland, California.  Now, I’m sure that the interviews themselves are honest and the stories representative of the lives of underage streetwalkers in Oakland, California.  The problem lies in the fact that the true stories are peppered with bogus police “trafficking statistics” and, as usual, the distinction between escort and streetwalker is deliberately smeared and voluntary adult prostitution is conflated with coerced underage prostitution.  Here’s one particularly sneaky example, deceptively entitled “The Story of an Escort”:

Youth Radio’s investigation of online sex classifieds found countless “escort reviews”  like this one on a Bay Area review site, featuring partially nude photos of a young woman and the following description: “I have the charm of the girl next door, the sexiness of your newest crush, the sophistication of your business partner, and the youth of a college girl.”  Youth Radio called the woman whose phone number was posted with the ad and she agreed to an interview if we didn’t use her name.  She said she is 24 years old and that while a pimp coerced her into prostitution as a teenager, she now worked on her own – a so-called renegade or rogue.

First of all, that is an ad, not a review; reviews are written by clients.  But that bit of misinformation pales into insignificance beside the last line:  Not only is the fact that she walked away from her pimp and set up her own business presented as unusual (because obviously we can’t admit that most hookers can take care of ourselves without the help of cops and other “rescuers”, and that pimps aren’t all-powerful and inescapable slavemasters), the bogus terms “renegade” and “rogue” imply some sort of pimp-run establishment which, simply put, does not exist.  “Renegade” implies that independent escorts are ostracized outsiders in the escort world, and “rogue” implies they are rare, when in actuality it’s the other way around.  As I discussed in my column of July 27th, true pimps (as opposed to boyfriends, shady escort services and male employees) are in the minority even among streetwalkers and vanishingly rare among escorts.  “Hobbyists” dislike seeing girls with pimps and other escorts look down on them and/or work toward convincing them to dump their “managers” and do it themselves.  In the escort world, it is the pimped girls who are the rare outcasts, not the other way around!

Tomorrow we’ll look more at the government campaign to spread disinformation about prostitution and other subjects, and the shockingly widespread compliance of the mainstream news media with the rapidly-developing Ministry of Truth.

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